The Fastest Growing Job In America Pays Less Than $10 Per Hour (March 11, 2013)

By
Sy Mukherjee

Think Progress

March 11, 2013

They swap out bed pans, tend to wounds, and assist with every facet of day-to-day life — sometimes even living with their patients. They’re home health care aides, and they are a crucial resource in caring for America’s sick, elderly, and disabled — and they do it all for an average wage of $9.70 per hour, less than the mean hourly compensation for lifeguards, food servers, and dry cleaners.

That reality will continue to affect more and more Americans, as growth in this particular portion of the health care industry has been fast — and it’s only going to get faster. Job growth in the American health care sector doubled from January to February, led by strong gains in ambulatory care givers, hospital workers, and home health aides. And as CNN Money points out, an uptick in America’s elderly population — fueled by aging Baby Boomers — will lead to an explosion in demand for such workers’ services.

Under these conditions, it’s no surprise then that about 40% of home aides rely on public assistance, such as Medicaid and food stamps, just to get by.

“What you have is a situation here where the people that we count on to care for our families cannot take care of their own, and that’s got to change,” said Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. [...]

A recent study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimates immigrants make up 28% of home health care workers, and of those, one in five are undocumented.

The Census Bureau has found that 53% of home health aides are minorities. By their calculations, it is the single most common job for black women, who alone represent nearly a third of the entire profession.

This is part of the reason workers are undervalued and underpaid, say worker advocates like Eileen Boris, a professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The fact that the populations who are already disproportionately affected by poverty and poor access to essential services are turning to such low-wage, low-benefit jobs is a sad reflection on both America’s economic recovery and holes in the social safety net. In fact, most of the jobs added to the U.S. economy since the recession ended pay low wages.